Voice searches now make up 20% of all search queries. And that number is only going to grow; by 2020, we expect it to hit 50%. But how does voice search differ from traditional search methods? Why are people using it? And how can you adapt your brand’s strategies to ensure you always come out on top?
THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF VOICE SEARCH
Voice search is making search queries longer. For a long time, text search conditioned us to keep search queries as short as possible. They taught us to recognise ‘stopwords’ (words that might be ignored in a search query), and exclude them when looking for information.
But this behaviour – and expectations – began changing when Google’s introduced Quick Answers back in 2012. This is the box out content that answers queries directly via the search engine results page:
An example of a Quick Answer in the Google search results
That resulted in users lengthening their search queries and being more specific in order to get answers to questions without having to click on any links.
And these habits are carrying over into voice search, for a couple of key reasons:
• Firstly, voice search queries are typically question-led and feature question words like ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ – since Quick Answers and voice search were introduced, search volume around these questions has increased 61%
• Secondly, voice search users also tend to use more conversational language in their search queries, as they no longer need to be succinct
The chart below shows how voice search queries are more likely to use more words than text queries:
For more information, please contact our local search expert Benjamin Bonnet.
Read our related article : 8 ways to optimise your content and search strategies for voice search